Tagged #1

I've been tagged twice lately & am trying to catch up!

Veganbaby tagged me a couple of weeks ago to share 5 random/weird things about myself and to list the top 5 places I'd like to see again.

First the personal info...
1)I'm really noise sensitive. I hate continuous loud noises like a TV or radio- or 5 year old pretending to be a pterydactyl. It becomes especially problematic for me in the evenings when I'm tired.
2) I dislike playing with kid toys. This isn't to say I dislike playing with my kids- there are many, many things I do like doing with them- playing with toys is just not one of them.
3)I enjoy knitting. I'm painfully slow at it and if I had to clothe my family with my knitting, we'd be some cold folks. But I still enjoy it.
4) I once started working on a Masters in Public Health. I was having second thoughts about it starting the second term, but having to take a statistics course did me in. I passed the course, but realized that public health wasn't really what I wanted to spend my life doing.
5)I've lived in 5 states and will be moving to a 6th one in about 6 months.

OK- five places I'd like to see again. There are so many new places I'd like to see, but there are a few I'd gladly revisit.
1) Hawaii-- and can't wait to do it
2) New York City- in spite of the crowds and noise. I went in high school and would love to go again, but only for a short visit
3)Canada- have actually been a few times, but not to the really pretty/interesting/historic parts
4)California- spent overnight in San Francisco on the way to Hawaii- I'd love to see more of it-especially Northern CA
5)Washington DC- such a cool place-- to visit.

Yay for me! I finally did it. I think I'm supposed to tag 5 more people, but I'll have to come back to that.

Job search update #5001

Here goes-

The TN job was filled. No further explanation than that was given, so that's all I have to share.

Virginia- we have a official job offer and they have asked for a response within 2 weeks. It would be a good job in a beautiful place.

Indiana- Dave met with the new medical director (Stan) friday. It went very well. Stan told Dave he wants him to work for him, so essentially another verbal offer. He will be meeting with all the powers that be on Monday. Supposedly, we are supposed to receive a written offer within a week. As always, we'll see.

The good news is that it really is almost settled. Finally.

Happy Birthday 5th Dillon (a little belatedly...)

OK, so her birthday was February 15th. We weren't late celebrating it, of course, I'm just a little late in posting about it.

She's 5 years old! I can't believe it! She's such a smart, curious, BUSY kid, it's almost hard to describe her. She asks 10,000 questions a day, comes up with the great realizations from the things we read and the movies she watches. She's incredibly creative and really a pretty amazing problem solver-- for 5 years old. She learned her alphabet - upper and lower case- in about 3 weeks once she decided it was interesting. She now regularly spells things out from signs she sees and asks what word it is. She also learned how to use a computer with amazing competence in that same space of time. Well, except for when she erased all the icons off my desktop, but we'll just nevermind that. Just last week she started writing letters and can make most of them recognizably. She's a great big sister most of the time and can make Corryn laugh like no one else can- though she can get irritated with Corryn's crying like no one else as well.

Her current favorites: Horses, horses and horses. Dinosaurs and anything to do with the human body are a very close second. She loves Dave's stories from work. She likes to cook with me, except that she doesn't like to help with whatever I'm making, she wants to make her own. This leads to some really interesting (and usually inedible) concoctions. But she's so proud of them and has learned a great deal about cooking just from being able to play with spices, flour and water.

Her current least favorites: eating- she proclaims it boring, cleaning up, getting into the bath- then interestingly enough, also dislikes getting out of the tub, still hates getting her teeth brushed, loud noises and crowds.

Opening presents (with a little help...):

A dinosaur!

Birthday cake! She wanted to use Corryn's "1" candle plus four regular candles to make 5. OK, whatever, it's her birthday-

Horses, horses, horses....


Happy Birthday, my no-longer-so-little one!

Where I've been

Nowhere, really. Literally. I'm struggling with this winter. It's my last New England winter and it's a doozy. Someone told Dave that by mid February, we'd had 7 feet of snow. I totally believe it. I find it so difficult to get 2 young kids bundled up to go outside, when I really don't want to be out in the cold myself. The days feel endlessly gray- which they are when you have gotten this much snow. Of course, spending all that time indoors isn't such a good thing either, so it's kind of a no win situation. With Dillon's brain and body whirling around with ideas for things to play- and all the toys that go with the ideas along with the sheer destructive forces of the full-fledged toddler Corryn, the house is hopelessly messy. Not just the cursory "Oh, please ignore the mess" kind of mess that you say when someone comes over, but the kick something everytime you take a step kind of mess. I feel like I'm drowning in stuff sometimes. It's just exhausting. Warm weather - and the ability to get outside easily- cannot come soon enough. It will do wonders for my mental state.

To share in the joy of the snow for my non-New England friends, some photos:

This is the current view outside the kitchen window. The bottom of the window is about 5 feet off the ground from the outside. That hump at the bottom of the picture is the pile of snow that is now visible, between what snow has fallen in addition to what has fallen off the roof. Since the backyard is so shady, I bet it'll be there, albeit shrinking, until late May. I'll try to remember to document it.

Looking at the street that runs beside my house-

Looking across the street at my neighbor's house- really, it's there.

Job search update #5000

No, it isn't settled yet. Still. Yes, we're sick of dealing with it, thinking about it, talking about it, having it hang over our heads. Really we are.

So, here's the summary-
Indiana job- they do have a medical director chosen and Dave has spoken with him by telephone. It isn't enough. The new director wants him to make another trip there so they can meet in person. Seriously, could this have moved any slower?! His inital interview was in early September.

Tennessee job- He really liked it there, got a "we love you" email from them, but they already had other interviews scheduled that they want to honor, so their time frame for making a decision is still 2-3 weeks from now.

Virginia- I think I forgot to mention he went on an interview in western VA. He also really liked it there and they gave strong messages that they really liked him. Initially, their timeframe for a decision was by the end of Feb. Dave got an email last week saying that they were planning in making a decision in the next few days. So far, no word from them, though.

More maddening waiting. We're so done with the waiting. This was supposed to be the fun and easy part.

How to get well by Dillon

Fart a lot.

Take lots of medicine.

Get lots of rest.

This is particularly relevant since we all (except Corryn so far) have some sort of awful coughing, body aching viral madness. What a joy on top of the several inches of snow we got last night and the endless gray days.

Good reasons not to clean the kitchen

I've been in major clean out mode as of late- you know, getting ready to sell the house and move in a few months. I thought it would be a good idea to run the self-cleaning option on the stove as an easy way to getting it really good and clean in there. Afterall, surely someone will overlook all the kid clutter in the house and know it was well taken care of if the inside of the oven is clean- right? So, for the first time in the almost 5 years we've been in the house, I tried to utilize this clearly beneficial option.

Except... it started beeping "door" at me approximately 2 minutes into the cycle. I fiddled with the door until the alarm changed to "F-9." Hmmm.... did a quick search online to find the .pdf of the owners manual (since the previous owners didn't leave it for us) and found nothing about an F-9 alarm. I called Amana, talked to a very kind customer service person, had her share my joy in the continuously beeping alarm only to find out that F-9 indicated a problem with the door latch and that the oven would now be locked until a new latch could be put in. Shut the stupid thing off, took down the number of the repair person, planning to call the next day. More money out on a house that we're wanting to sell very soon. There's something so wrong about that.

Not learning my lesson, the next day, I proceed to do more cleaning out, finding a bag of flaxseeds that I purchased easily 3 years ago and have used, well, almost not at all. To the trashcan with them!

Except... on the way to the trashcan, they spilled out all over the floor. Did I trip over the dog? A toy left on the floor? Nope, just dropped the bag. So, now there are these little buggy looking things all over the floor I had just swept. The dog, who has a rather sensitive stomach is trying the eat them, Corryn is crawling all through them and Dillon is repeatedly yelling "What happened?!" from the other room. I suppose that's good in that it prevented them from hearing what I was muttering. Out comes the vacuum cleaner- the dog goes running, Corryn tries to chew on the cord. It's almost all clean when the phone rings. While I'm on the phone, Dillon keeps picking Corryn up, making her mad.

How exactly does it go from perfectly calm to mass chaos so quickly?

Anyway, I got the mess cleaned up, procrastinated in calling the repair person and found that a matter of about 16 hours later, the oven unlocked itself- with all the baked on stuff inside still firmly in place.

I just hope anyone thinking about buying our house didn't just read this.